The Roadside Memorial Project, 2013TheRoadside Memorial Project is an ongoing, site-specific installation of reflective road signs that function as a memorial for animals killed on the road, as well as a new kind of warning sign for drivers. The silhouettes of animals commonly killed on Kentucky roads are staggered on the ground, some at the edge of the road, others just beyond. Unlike standard road signs, the signs are positioned so that they sit low on the ground. The hope is to shift the driver’s gaze from looking up, towards signs that are situated at the height of the human body, to looking down, towards signs that are situated at the height of the nonhuman animal’s body and toward the edges of the road, where wildlife is most likely to appear. Each double-sided sign is covered in a white reflective sign material that can be seen by drivers coming in either direction. The color white was chosen not only because it is the most highly reflective color, but because it references the iconography of human roadside memorial crosses and denotes innocence, sacrifice, spirits and ghostly specters. The installation comes to life at night, and is "turned on" by the passing drivers who illuminate it, many of whom slow down. The number one way to reduce wildlife mortality is to reduce driver speed so this was an unexpected and pleasing outcome of the project. The Roadside Memorial Project is discussed in more detail (along with the work of other artists who photograph “road kill”) in the chapter, "Remains to be seen: Photographing "road kill" and The Roadside Memorial Project" in the book Economies of Death, published by Routledge. An excerpt from this chapter follows:

An estimated one million animals—are killed each day--in motor vehicle collisions in the United States alone.[1] In order to help combat human fatalities and vehicular damage, wildlife warning signs featuring large-bodied animals are erected to warn drivers to the possibility of their presence; yet signs warning of smaller wildlife—who pose a much lesser threat to human life or property—such as turtles, squirrels, raccoons, or possums, are overwhelmingly absent on our nation’s highway road signs. While wildlife warning signs have been shown to reduce collisions with animals, and can function to protect both human and non-human animal’s lives, their primary purpose remains to protect human lives above all Others (as evidenced by the disparity between signs for large-bodied vs. small-bodied wildlife).In this way, the wildlife warning sign, as a highly visible, public marker, creates a particular kind of frame that works to establish “whose lives can be marked as lives, and whose deaths will count as deaths.”[2] (…) What would an egalitarian representation of road signs that reflects the true diversity of animals killed on the road look like?In eastern Oregon, along U.S. 20, black-tailed jackrabbits lie like welts of sod—three, four, then a fifth. By the bridge over Jordan Creek, just shy of the Idaho border in the drainage of the Owyhee River, a crumpled adolescent porcupine leers up almost maniacally over its blood-flecked teeth. I carry each one away from the tarmac into a cover of grass or brush out of decency, I think. And worry. Who are these animals, their lights gone out? What journeys have fallen apart here? —Barry Lopez, Apologia